Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Tumblehome sea chest

During the building of the small fairy tale bed, I found myself dreaming of making something real again. I know that a doll bed is for real, but somehow I found myself constantly drawing small tumblehome sea chests on every scrap piece of paper lying around.

The other day we received some stainless steel tubes that came strapped to a nice wide board, so suddenly I had 18' of a 6" x 1" spruce board at my hands..

The board was transformed into some 12" wide panels that could be used for the build.

I have decided to try to make as quick a build as possible, so there will be no secret compartments or fancy metal working involved.
One of the reasons is that it is not easy to plan some regular woodworking out here, the other is that I would like to finish the chest before going home.

The chest will be smaller than original sea chests to make it easier for me to transport it home, and because I find it easier to find use for smaller chests in the household compared to large chests. The chest should end up being around 24" x 16" with a height of 13-14" depending on how deep I make the skirt and how thick the lid will be.

Today I cut the panels to length and started on the dovetails. Normally I prefer dovetailing with tails first, but due to the lack of decent work holding out here, I do it pins first. For this build I have chosen to use a ratio of 1:6 for the angle of the pins/tails.
The design will be a tumblehome sea chest with canted sides and canted ends.